Monday, April 18, 2011

Submission Sheenah

Name: Sheenah Freitas
Email: bellesfairytale[at]yahoo[dot]com
Title and genre: THE CHOSEN -- YA fantasy

Pitch: A reincarnated goddess must gather the powers of the gods in order to prevent a dire prophesy.


From behind the bar counter a young woman looked about and sighed. There was much that she still needed to do before dusk arrived bringing with it her first customers. Diminutive sunlight made its way from a shattered window; the ones that were intact had so much dust caked on them they sucked everything in like a black hole allowing nothing to pass through. Like the windows, the floor was covered in a film preventing its true luster from being seen. Miniscule tables filled the room with dull chairs on top. She pulled her blonde hair back behind her, but it managed to come undone within the first hour of cleaning.

Children could be heard outside, giggling. With a heavy sigh she dropped her mop and headed toward the door.

The sun was shining down on her as she walked out of Eternity, a small building in the dilapidated part of town. A month of cleaning and repairs wasn’t enough to take the years of negligence away. It was a bar for the hopeless, the weak, and the poor.

She peered down the alley. It stopped at the main street and continued on until it hit another road before continuing on again. To her, the alley was never ending, forever testing a human’s patience much like time. In front of her was a concrete courtyard the other businesses in the area used. The children, who were playing with a ball, hadn’t noticed her yet.

2 comments:

  1. Sheenah,

    I think you need to put a bit more work into the pitch. While it conveys a plot (I don't know if it conveys your plot; I know my own pitch had to cut so much that it barely does), I feel that a goddess gathering the power of the gods is almost repetitive. She's a goddess, which implies having the powers of the gods. Can you either sharpen this so the struggle sounds more difficult or work the dire prophecy angle more?

    As far as the first 250 words, they're nicely written and evocative of place, but I wonder if you want to start your novel with a description of a room and an unnamed woman. I'd be more drawn in if there was a hint of who the woman is in the opening paragraph. You have that in the final paragraph, but at that point, I'm wondering why she doesn't have a name.

    I'm a bit ambivalent about the above point because I do feel that the final sentence delivers a small payoff. But I'm not sure the shopper will get past the first paragraph before deciding to look at a different title.

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